Equipment - Tsunami 1.1 (Red)

I haven't put up a recent picture of the now-red Tsunami in race form. I did only race it twice in its full race regalia and twice with a training front wheel due to the gusty wind conditions.

The second "race", if you could call it that, lasted just three laps.

The bike is therefore still a bit foreign to me. I hadn't really sprinted on it, not "ferociously", and I still haven't checked the SRM for accuracy. I mention the former because I wanted to make sure things were up to snuff - derailleurs adjusted, position reasonable, stuff like that - and I mention the latter because the power numbers I'm seeing were immediately 10-20% higher than those I see on the black Tsunami.

I went for a ride on a very close by loop recently on the bike shod with its Bastognes. After some intraweb discussions on wheel weight and aerodynamics I decided to throw on the race wheels to check them out. I'll post about the rides later but the second ride gave me a chance to photograph the bike loaded out in race day gear.

The Tsunami 1.1

First off you'll note some half finished yard work in the background. That's our handiwork. The part you don't see is that there's poison ivy mixed in there. I didn't know either but it's all over me - my arms, legs, stomach, back, neck, even just below my eyes. I must be much less stressed in life because it's not really annoying me, not like it usually does.

Anyway, back to the bike. I have some messy electrical tape holding the SRM cable to the frame. I plan on replacing it with clear tape of some kind.

One thing that you can't see are the parallel honed and faced bearing surfaces (the BB30 bottom bracket and the headset). It's made a huge difference in how the bike works. First off I started riding a bit squirrelly because the bike steered too easily (to me, coming off of some pretty stiff headsets). Second I am saving some decent amount of power because the cranks turn so easily. I would regularly see 5 or 8 watts when soft pedaling on the black bike, and I saw 15 watts once when pedaling with no load. Now it's negligible.

The quick steering and the efficient crank bearings make the bike feel like I'm riding rollers when I'm actually on the road. The bike feels super smooth, super quick.

Very nice.

The frame is much shorter in the rear now, I think 39.2 cm chainstays, so it reacts really quickly if I want it to change direction. They're just a touch longer than the black Tsunami's stays but basically the same.

For pedals I wanted to get the Keo Carbon again but with the metal plate for the cleat surface. Unfortunately the new pedals are absolutely wimpy on retention strength - I can clip out pretty much at will, even with the tension totally cranked. I need to figure something out because right now all my out of saddle efforts are somewhat checked, even sprints, because I'm afraid of unclipping.

For "race gear" I have the HED Stinger 7 front and Stinger 9 rear on the bike. I'll do a post on them soon, I promise. Suffice it to say that they're really wide, they have a rounded rim edge (the spoke side of the rim), and they feel really fast.

Oh and they make that cool "Swoosh swoosh" sound.

The SLR saddle.

I'm trying this saddle because I'm running out of the Titanio that I favor. It seems minimalistic but I rode it to Bethel, a 4.5 hour ride for me (at 14 mph), and it worked out well. I admit I was a bit tender because the different shape resulted in different pressure points but I was also going from virtually not riding to doing a 4.5 hour ride. In addition I started cramping almost immediately on that ride, due to a severe lack of fitness, so I had to stay seated for most of the ride. This literally kept me in the saddle even when I wanted to stand and stretch - the saddle definitely got tested on that ride.

Not only that but even when I was pedaling okay I couldn't pedal hard. This meant I wasn't supporting a significant portion of my weight with my legs, resulting in increased pressure on the saddle.

Even with both those things working against me the saddle seemed to work fine for me. The one thing is that it's more slippery than the Titanio. I don't have a solution at this point.

As far as fit I had to raise the post a bit because the saddle sits closer to the post. I raised it a touch more because the "center" of the saddle, where I end up sitting, is much further forward than the Titanio. This had the effect of shortening the distance from the saddle to the pedals by about 3-4 mm.

Err no you can't see the smudge marks on the seat post.

I took this picture because I could see the smudge marks on the post from where I raised it first for the saddle height difference and then again for the slightly different "center". No worries, it shows the seat collar area well.

The business end of the bike.

The Deda stem is misnamed, in my opinion, as a track ("pista") stem. In fact it only points 3 degrees (70 degrees or -20 deg) down from my regular stem which is horizontal (73 degrees or -17 deg from the head tube angle). I want a 14 cm stem that drops me at least a centimeter more but I can't find one.

The Deda is a 14 cm to try and make up for the lack of reach of the FSA Compact bars. I'm still short 1 cm in reach and the bars are 1 cm higher than my other bars. Due to this I'm almost positive I'm going to be moving back to the lower crit bend bars. Either that or I need to find some compact reach bars that drop 140 mm instead of 120 mm.

Centaur 10 speed shifters

I'm going to post more on this decision later too but I had two reasons for getting these shifters. One, I wanted to see if the new shape works for me. Two, I wanted a shifter that only gave me one shift at a time. The Record 10s shifters I have allow me to dump the chain down a lot. Limiting that to just one cog will hopefully save me from shifting too many cogs at once in a sprint.

GOOP and my PCV (off the Cannondale so the first one I got)

On a side note my SRM has a slight crack in the front "cover", the clear plastic that covers the whole face of the computer head. The plastic alternately bulges and gets sucked in, depending on the atmospheric pressure I suppose, maybe temperature too. It tends to bulge in the summer, get sucked in in the winter. Whatever, the important part is that whatever I used to patch it would need to be flexible.

I used GOOP to patch it up. It's clear after it dries and it's flexible. I've used it to fix the driver's side mirror on the van, gluing new mirror glass to the plastic backing. Someone had hit the van while it was parked on the street and left me with a broken mirror glass. So far it's worked well - about 5 years or so.

Reviewing this post you can see that the bike isn't quite complete. I still need to hone the bar position relative to the saddle or change the bar completely. I need to address the pedals. But overall the bike is great - responsive, agile, and fun.

Equipment - Search For Titanio Replacement

"Titanio" is a misnomer, really - it basically means "titanium". But San Marco called a particular saddle the Titanio and it's a favorite of mine. I tried the Arione for a bit as it came on my Cannondale. I also tried, briefly, an SLR.

The problem with the Titanio is that I don't remember seeing it produced after about the year 2000. Some places had it in stock for another couple years. I didn't realize San Marco stopped production so I panicked and went looking for spare saddles. When I got my last new one I cleaned out one distributor's stock, all one of them.

A friend of mine remembered I used the saddles so he gave me three that he had. Apparently they no longer worked for him. I'm pretty sure one broke almost immediately; the other two were relegated to spare use and, eventually, to the track bike and the tandem. I could tell the saddles he gave me because he wore the sides out - being as he's more of a cyclist's build than me (aka he's not as heavy) I can only theorize that training a lot wears out the sides of these saddles.

Along with one desperate purchase, a plastic railed (not carbon, it's plastic, like regular plastic) version, I had two titanium saddles and the one plastic one.

Since then I've bought one used and a friend bought one used for me. The latter was sort of funny. Said friend emailed me to let me know that there was a Titanio up for grabs on eBay. I looked, it was reasonable, it was $35, and I thought, well, I should probably get it. A few hours later I decided that, yes, I'll get it. I went to my Watchlist and, yep, it was gone.

I emailed my friend.

"Dude, someone bought the saddle. I'm totally bummed."
"I bought the saddle because I didn't want you to miss out on it."
"Oh. Haha. Okay."
"I'll ship it to you."
"Okay, thanks."

I broke one of my precious saddles, leaving me with a total of three titanium and one plastic railed Titanio. When I built up my red Tsunami 1.1 I had the plastic one on the black bike, a ti railed one on the track bike, a ti rail one on the tandem, and I installed another ti railed one on the red bike.

I had just one spare.

I started to worry. I could steal the saddle off the tandem, fine, that bike is almost like a spare parts holder with its new shifters and ti railed Titanio. Okay, so it has two spares on it.

But after that... I didn't have much in the way of options. My sporadic checks on eBay didn't turn up much. Plus I wanted to find a current saddle that would work. This way I could build up stock, just like I did with the Titanio saddles.

The other thing weighing on my mind was the weight. The Titanios were about 220 grams, which isn't bad but it isn't great. I am conscious of a part's weight but I don't go out and get the lightest stuff on purpose. If it's light and it works I'll get it.

As an example my Cannondale SI SRM cranks are power meter cranks, fine. But they're also just 675 grams for the cranks, rings, and bottom bracket. In comparison the Campy cranks I had before were closer to 1000 grams, about 300 grams or 2/3 of a pound heavier. They didn't measure power, they were more flexible, and they required a proprietary fifth chainring bolt.

My SRM cranks are lighter, stiffer, and they measure power, and, based on everything that it came with (because it came as a bike I got a Cannondale SystemSix frameset, Campy Record build kit, Arione saddle... I sold off the wheels and bars and gave away the stem), they were relatively inexpensive.

When I buy these kinds of non-wear items, like cranks, saddles, pedals, bars, stems, seatposts, etc, I want to optimize the weight factor. I won't buy stupid light stuff, nor will I spend $300 on a post to save 20 grams. I will take a slightly heavier-than-lightest part that is durable and works well.

The new FSA Compact bar I want to adopt falls under those requirements. They cost little, about $50 at the local shop, they weigh within 30-50 grams of the lighter carbon bars (especially since I cut 30 grams worth of excess bar off, bringing them close to 200g actual weight), they're durable, and they work as long as I have a longer stem. I think anyway.

The Titanio saddles are durable, work well, but they're not optimal in terms of weight. If I could find a newer lighter saddle that worked as well I'd be in business.

I remembered the SLR saddle. I couldn't remember what I didn't like about them. I knew that the Ariones were a bit wide in the middle and flat fore and aft. I started looking at saddle profiles. I figured if anyone would have a similar saddle to the Titanio it would be the folks that made the Titanio, San Marco.

Someone somewhere mentioned that we don't sit on our sit bones, we sit on the inside edges of our pelvic cradles. I think the actual bone is the ramus of ischium. That makes sense to me because when I consciously sit on my sit bones I'm totally upright, an unnatural position for me on the bike. When I'm sitting "normal" my pelvis is tilted forward.  Until I read that comment on where we sit I couldn't visualize where it is that we sat, I just knew that the sides of the saddle sort of supported my pelvis.

With the idea of the ramus of ischium in my head I realized that it's not the tail of the saddle that counts - that's where I'd be sitting upright. It's the curve in the middle 2/3 of the saddle, how it flares outward.

The Arione was too wide there, hence it felt wide.

The Titanio is a bit more triangular.

I needed another "more triangular" saddle.

Selle Italia makes the SLR, a minimalist lightweight saddle. I had one before. I either sold it or gave it away but I'm not sure why. I decided that I'd give the SLR a shot again.

And then I checked the prices of the SLRs out there.

They were a bit much. I mean, okay, $100 is about the market price for a somewhat minimum saddle. But $300 for a saddle is a bit much for me.

I checked Slowtwitch and sure enough someone was selling a high end SLR for $125. I snapped it up. A few days later it showed up at the house.

Carbon rails and all that.

Note the flared shape. This is similar to the Titanio. Many new saddles are much narrower in the middle, flaring aggressively at the tail. I was looking for something less aggressively flared, like this thing.

Titanio saddle profile from above.

I didn't want a cut out either - I don't feel the need for one so I'm skipping that for now.

Weight of my (hopefully) new standard saddle.

The one I took off the bike.

You can see the wear starting on the side of the nose.

The weight difference is about 75 grams or a bit more than a tenth of a pound. Every 45 grams is a tenth of a pound (454 grams is a pound).

Of course I'm 7 pounds heavier than I was in late January after I did 33 hours of riding. After February, when I did 8 hours, I was 10 pounds heavier. A tenth of a pound is... an incremental gain at best. It will only count if I'm 15-20 lbs lighter than I am now, when each pound becomes more important, more significant. For now just makes the bike easier to put on the roof rack.

My spare. Odd, it's heavier.

When I checked the production dates on the saddles my original one was made in 1991 (based on the "91" stamped on the underside of the saddle). The newer/heavy one was made in 1999.

The important part is how the SLR worked. I went for a ride on Thursday with the saddle after I installed it. I had to raise the post a full centimeter as the saddle sat much lower.

The shape worked for me. I was in shorts so that meant thin material. I slid around on the saddle a bit more than normal - I don't know if there's some upholstery Son-of-a-Gun type stuff on it but I hope it gets a bit more tacky. I need to move the saddle up and forward a touch - I found myself sitting further back trying to get proper leg extension so the saddle is a bit low right now.

Currently my bikes are at 66 cm BB->Saddle (black bike with 175 mm cranks) and 66.5 cm BB->Saddle (red bike with 170 mm cranks). I think my normal height was 67 cm so I think I'm 0.5 cm too low. This would explain me pushing all the way back on the saddle trying to get enough leg extension.

I took the opportunity to install the ti bolts I accidentally bought for the Thomson post.

Speaking of incremental gains these are really incremental, almost microscopic...

The regular bolts.

The accidental ones, less than 10 grams lighter.

It was kind of a dumb purchase. I bought everything in my cart thinking I'd deleted these and I didn't realize I bought them until the package showed up. If they last then that's great. If they don't... well then I was dumb to buy them.

Let's put it this way - I didn't buy more of them.

I'll see how the SLR works for the next couple months. If you start seeing more SLRs on my bikes you'll know that they're working out.